How to Clean a Suede Jacket

It’s so nice to wear your favorite suede jacket on a cool day! After all, she warms just by her appearance.

Natural suede is a very durable and elastic material made from specially prepared skins of small animals.

This material does not have a front layer, so it is velvety and soft on both sides.

Suede clothing requires special careto preserve its best qualities and presentable appearance for a long time.

By properly caring for your jacket, you will take it out of the closet every time as if you had just bought it.

IMPORTANT! Suede is often called fabric that only imitates its velvet surface. However, these fabrics have different properties. Therefore, they need appropriate care.

This is the so-called Alcantara, as well as cotton and silk fabrics with pile on the front side.

Cleaning suede at home

As soon as the season of warm clothes ends, they are sent to storage in the closet. At this point, you must first carefully inspect your suede jacket.This will allow you to determine the extent of its contamination in order to choose the appropriate cleaning.

There is no need to take your jacket to the dry cleaner. Even with the most severe contamination, you can completely manage with home remedies.

Handy means for cleaning suede

Suede is resistant to washing, high temperatures, and alkali. Therefore, you can safely clean it with improvised means.

Dry cleaning

As practice shows, the areas that get most dirty on jackets are the sleeves and cuffs, the collar and pocket areas.

These places are most often salted, so they acquire a darker color.

• If the grime is small, it can be removed using a special silicone brush for suede.
• To be sure, dirty places can be sprinkled with starch and then cleaned.
• Instead of starch, you can use regular salt.
• If you don’t have a brush, a large eraser, an ordinary office eraser, will come in handy. It also cleans light stains quite well.

Wet cleaning

If the stains are more extensive and older, wet cleaning will be required.

The most suitable means at hand are vinegar, ammonia, purified gasoline or hydrogen peroxide.

Vinegar and ammonia are diluted in water.

• Vinegar - one tablespoon per glass of water.
• Ammonia – 5 drops per glass of water.

Use a cotton swab or soft cloth soaked in one of the indicated products to walk through the greasy areas.

After this, you can lightly rinse the area to be cleaned with clean water.

Removes fresh steam stains from the kettle well. You need to hold the product over steam and then brush it.

ATTENTION! Hot steam not only helps remove dirty stains, but also refreshes the pile.

Therefore, after cleaning, it is advisable to treat the entire jacket with a special steamer or hold it over a kettle.Then go over the entire pile with a brush.

How to restore cleanliness to a suede collar

The most prominent place on the jacket is the collar. But it is also most susceptible to contamination and salting.

If dry and wet cleaning have not helped and the collar still does not look fresh, it can be wash in warm water with detergent.

For this It is not necessary to immerse the collar in water.

It is enough to dissolve liquid detergent in water, wet the sponge, squeeze it lightly and work it over the collar.

Then the same procedure repeat with clean warm waterto remove any remaining detergent.

The wet collar needs to be straightened, place between two pieces of cotton cloth to remove excess moistureand then dry at room temperature.

How to properly wash a suede jacket

There are times when a suede jacket has been subjected to some kind of heavy contamination. This means that local cleaning is not enough.

Then there is nothing left to do but wash the item.

• To avoid damaging your expensive item, first read the care instructions on the jacket's label. As a rule, suede jackets are not machine washable, and hand washing must be done very carefully so that the suede is not completely saturated with soapy water.
• Therefore, the washing technique will be the same as when washing a collar.
• Hold the product over a container of soapy water and brush quickly, preventing the suede from becoming saturated with water.
• There is no need to twist a washed jacket. It is better to squeeze it between two terry towels and then dry it flat, away from radiators and direct sunlight.
• It is advisable to add conditioner to the rinse water so that after drying the suede is soft and does not harden.
• When the jacket is completely dry, run a brush through the pile to lift it slightly and freshen it up.

Useful tips for caring for a suede jacket

• Brown suede can be cleaned and its color can be refreshed using coffee grounds. Apply the wet grounds to the jacket, let it dry, and then brush with a dry brush.
• To maintain the softness of suede for a long time, it must be periodically wiped with a glycerin solution (0.5 teaspoon per liter of water).
• Buy a water-repellent spray and treat the jacket immediately after purchase. This way the jacket will stay clean longer. This means it will be much easier to clean.